Sunday, May 28, 2017

During reunion, Minter Dial hosted a screening of his award-winning film The Last Ring Home.

The Last Ring Home is the story of Lt Minter Dial’s Annapolis Naval Academy ring, that miraculously made its way home 17 years after he was killed as a POW of the Japanese in WWII. The Last Ring Home is a tribute to Lt Dial, the producer's grandfather, and all members of the Greatest Generation. It is also a journey of self-discovery, having an impact on the filmmaker, his wider family and many other people in its wake. This story, which took over 25 years of research, illustrates the importance of serendipity and the role of good and bad luck in piecing together a personal history of someone who died 70 years ago. The Last Ring Home is to inspire everyone to uncover their own personal history, to keep a foot in their past and the other in the future, and to be thankful for the tremendous present in which we live, thanks to the sacrifices of the those who fought in WWII. Check it out!

Just got back from our 30th Reunion. Wow! What a wonderful time. We had a terrific crowd and an even better vibe. Thanks so much to Lisa Vigliotti Harkness, Darcy Troy Pollack and Matthew Homer Mead for organizing such a wonderful weekend. It was truly special.

Monday, December 8, 2014

I just finished a really well done book -- The Short Tragic Life of Robert Peace. I am sorry that it had to be written. I am glad that it was.

Robert Peace was a Yalie from Newark. He played water polo, majored in MB&B, was a member of secret society. And, a little over a decade after graduating, he was gunned down in Newark over drugs.

This book dealt with friendship, race, fitting in at Yale, and the struggles of one student to straddle the worlds of Newark and the academy. I can't say that I saw much of what Robert Peace saw at Yale, even though we played the same sport. Seeing things from his vantage point through this book makes me reflect back on people I knew, experiences I had. It made me wonder whether I really understood much of anything about where many of our classmates were coming from.

A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

Recently, I blogged about the coverage of rape on college campuses. Since then, the Rolling Stone piece about UVA has been called into question.

Many have written about what the UVA story means, particularly now that some of the details of the account at the heart of the story that kicked off this debate have been called into question. How allegations of rape, how sex and issues of consent and how women should be treated on campus are still important issues to grapple with.

Below is a piece I read on line at The New Yorker by
Margaret Talbot. Thought it was interesting.
What do you think?

Protestors carry signs in front of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia on November 22, 2014.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY RYAN M. KELLY / THE DAILY PROGRESS / AP

Last month, Rolling Stone ran an article about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, based on interviews with a student identified only as “Jackie.” It now appears that key details of the story, reported by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, may not be true. Other journalists—notably, my friend Hanna Rosin and Allison Benedikt, at Slate, and Paul Farhi, Erik Wemple, and T. Rees Shapiro, at The Washington Post—raised doubts about the reporting late last month, but Rolling Stone dismissed them. Then, on Friday, the magazine issued a statement saying, “In the face of new information reported by the Washington Post and other news outlets, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account.” (An earlier version of the statement had emphasized the magazine’s trust in Jackie, and regretted that it had been “misplaced”—wording that seemed to settle too much responsibility for the story’s shortcomings on Jackie and not enough on the reporter or her editors.)Rolling Stone’s statement did not enumerate the discrepancies, but the Post did.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Premieres December 16 at 8/7C on PBS

Preview:

Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler

Join best-selling author/adventurer Bruce Feiler on an epic journey as he travels with contemporary pilgrims on six historic pilgrimages around the world and explores how these sacred landscapes and revitalized routes are reshaping faith

The two groups have taken root on campus and among the extended Yale community of alumni. The WFF was established in 2001 during university’s tercentennial year to highlight the presence of women at Yale and the accomplishments of Yale alumnae. YaleWomen was formed following the 2010 celebration of 40 years of co-education in Yale College, and has been the fastest growing group in the Yale alumni network.

The 2014 conference, the first major event undertaken jointly by the two groups, fulfilled the aspirations for “a way to tap into the talents of the women represented by a Yale women’s network of both faculty and graduates” that were voiced in 2001 at the WFF’s inaugural conference titled “Gender Matters,” by Linda Koch Lorimer ’77 J.D., then the vice president and secretary of the university and now vice president for global and strategic initiatives, and one of the moderators of the 2014 event. Lorimer in 2001 asked, “Could we imagine a ‘new sisters’ connection,’ one that had such a robust inventory of the resources Yale women represent (our experiences, talents and interests) that we could call upon one another to help address the larger issues facing our society?”

Here's the latest about one of our classmates -- and one of my roommates! -- Rob Raguso. I think Rob is one of the most successful of our classmates because he has followed his passions from the day he entered Yale and has crafted a professional and personal life that is true to those passions and his values. An inspiration! Here's a piece about Rob from the Ithaca Journal.

In conversation: Richard Prum and Carl Zimmer

Yale professor Richard Prum, who received the MacArthur Genius Grant in 2009 for his work in evolutionary ornithology, and Carl Zimmer ’87, English professor and science journalist for TheNew York Times and other publications, first met when Prum came to Yale in 2004. The two friends got together one Tuesday afternoon for a quick chat by the taxidermic bird collections of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

On the evolutionary psychologist in the Jane Austen seminar

P: The question I’m interested in is: how is the aesthetic change that happens in human acts like the aesthetic change that happens in nature? And really what it’s about is studying subjective experience, which most scientists are afraid of. That the fact that you like something — that’s a force in nature. What I’m trying to do is make that the subject of our study, and I think we can study it comparatively. So — two species had some ancestor that had the same song. And those two species no longer prefer the same song that the ancestor did — they sing different songs. So we can’t know what it’s like to like a certain song, but we can examine how changes occur … Subjective experience won’t be reducible to standard analysis, but we can create new ways to approach it and understand aspects of it that people are afraid of.

This whole work has led to a broader interest in aesthetics in human arts and in that case, I start with the body of work that is science and gradually move into a body of work that isn’t science, but somehow it is compatible with science. And that’s what I’m interested in now. How is it that the different bodies of knowledge are interconnected? But in a respectful way. I’m not a scientist walking into the humanities to say, “OK, let me explain. Once you understand this, you’ll understand your field.” That’s not what it is at all. What I’m trying to do is create a scientific perspective that supports work in the humanities and social sciences.

Z: I’m an old English major here, so I always find it kind of funny that evolutionary psychologists are barging into English departments and explaining Jane Austen to them in terms of fitness, and so on. It’s not necessarily that it’s wrong, but it brushes away important issues about culture and history and even just the kind of thing that literature is great at — exploring language and [how] language works in our lives and how it can betray us, all its complexities. Sometimes scientists seem to want to bring it down to some basic principles.

And that is an effort to explain away culture, not explain culture. And unfortunately a lot of people associate this with the mission of science. That reductionist relation is the value. And there are all sorts of examples in science where that failed and we gave up on it and moved on with better science.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

In the last several months, I have rediscovered the beauty of the Yale Glee Club. At the convocation welcoming the new freshman, the Glee Club sang a song that was new to me -- Raise Your Voices, but the current Glee Club director, Jeffrey Douma. (A YouTube video of it is below.) Listen to the words . . . very moving. I couldn't help but cry as I heard them.

Facebook, the source of all wisdom, informed me earlier this week that the Yale Glee Club concert at Harvard was being broadcast via livestreaming. It was terrific. If you'd like to hear future concerts, you can in the comfort of your own home.

Their next concert is December 7, and it is a sing along of Handel's Messiah. Here are the details:

December 7, 2014 - 1:30pm

Join the Yale Glee Club and the Yale Symphony Orchestra for our Annual Messiah Sing-In and sing along to the chorus sections of Handel’s The Messiah. We will perform a number of excerpts from the timeless oratorio. Scores will be available for purchase, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit New Haven’s homeless.